New allegations of sexual misconduct rocked Donald Trump’s campaign Friday as the candidate denounced his accusers, blasted news organizations that have reported the claims and said it all shows “the whole election is being rigged.”

The Republican presidential nominee said his advisers have urged him to talk about other issues, but he felt compelled to defend himself against a stream of accusations from women he said he has never met.

“I feel I have to talk about it,” he told a rally at Greensboro, North Carolina, adding, “It’s a phony deal. I have no idea who these women are.”

The latest accuser, a former contestant on Trump’s reality show, “The Apprentice,” said he made unwanted sexual advances at a Beverly Hills hotel in 2007. Summer Zervos, 41, is among several women who have made similar allegations in the past week.

I can’t say the accusations aren’t true. I don’t know anything for sure.

But I do know that we’re not going to have time to investigate any of this or deal with it in court.

I also know that the last time we had these accusations surface they didn’t all come out at once a month before the election. Bill Clinton’s many accusers did not “just happen” to tell their tales in order to keep him out of the White House.

Trump is a wealthy man and all these women could have, over the years, sued him for this behavior if it occurred. Yet nothing happened until now.

The media has been digging diligently into Trump’s past to find dirt. How did they never find anything before now?

Maybe they sat on the information to do the most damage to Trump’s chances of winning.

But did Hillary Clinton and the media really want Trump to campaign this long and do this much damage to Hillary? It would have been better to kneecap Trump earlier and put him on the defensive. If, however, they couldn’t find any real dirt, then these accusers might be an act of desperation for the Clinton campaign.

Maybe, but I don’t know. Neither do you.

It is perfectly plausible to think the accusations fit other aspects of Trump’s behavior in the past. But that might be precisely the reason for making false accusations.

What I do know is that, as President, Donald Trump can still be brought to justice if the facts are confirmed in a court of law. With the media and the establishment (including the GOP) so opposed to him, Trump won’t have much of a chance if he is really guilty.

Joe Scudder is the "nom de plume" (or "nom de guerre") of a fifty-ish-year-old writer and stroke survivor. He lives in St Louis with his wife and still-at-home children. He has been a freelance writer and occasional political activist since the early nineties. He describes his politics as Tolkienesque.